‘Shocked’ Nigerians in U.S. Express Fears of Guilt by Association After Arrest

MARY M. CHAPMAN

Wednesday

Dec 30, 2009 at 5:13 AM

A group of Nigerians has condemned the failed attack involving a Nigerian suspect, and several Nigerians said they expected prejudicial fallout.

DETROIT — When news broke on Christmas Day that a young Nigerian man had been arrested in a thwarted terrorist attack aboard a jetliner bound for the airport here, Joseph Ajiri, a Nigerian-born entrepreneur who lives in the suburb of Oak Park, was tucking into steaming servings of foofoo, moi-moi and other traditional Nigerian dishes with about a dozen friends and relatives.

“We just had some people here for Christmas dinner, then all of a sudden this comes on TV,” Mr. Ajiri said. “It was regretful that he was Nigerian, but that didn’t make us any more angry. We were all very happy that the explosion didn’t take place, that he wasn’t successful.”

About 10,000 Nigerians live in Michigan, half of them in Detroit, said Edwin Dyke, founder and board member of the Nigerian Foundation of Michigan. On Monday, the group held a meeting of about 30 local Nigerian leaders to draft a statement condemning the failed attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which was bound from Amsterdam with several passengers who had begun their trip in Nigeria. Among them was the man now accused of being a terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

“We want to tell Homeland Security and the federal government that we are sorry about what happened,” Dr. Dyke said, “that this isn’t like our people, that we believe this is an isolated incident but that we will keep our ears open.”

He added that Mr. Abdulmutallab, 23, had “no roots in Detroit” and was not a member of the local Nigerian community.

Salewa Ola, a Nigerian who founded the Detroit-based United African Community Organization, emphasized that the plane attack was “not what our community stands for.”

“We are shocked and embarrassed,” Dr. Ola said. “This has given all of us a black eye.”

Relatives have said that Mr. Abdulmutallab, who is from a Muslim family, was particularly devout, even as a child.

Twenty percent of Nigerians living in Michigan are Muslim, Dr. Dyke said. But Kamol Bello, a Detroit resident who is a Nigerian Muslim and has lived in the United States for 20 years, was quick to disassociate the religion from what occurred on Flight 253 on Christmas Day.

“A truly religious person would not do that,” Mr. Bello said, adding that Muslims he knew did not think Mr. Abdulmutallab “is Muslim or Christian because no true religion teaches” someone to ignite an explosive aboard a plane.

“That’s just crazy ideology,” Mr. Bello said.

Even so, Mr. Ajiri and several other Nigerians living in and around Detroit said they expected prejudicial fallout from the attack and from an incident on the same flight two days later in which a Nigerian man spent a long time in the plane’s lavatory, arousing the suspicion of fellow passengers, flight attendants and an air marshal and setting off security alerts as the plane landed. It turned out that the man had simply been ill.

“Profiling? When you look at 9/11 and what happened with the Arabic community, we cannot expect anything different,” Mr. Ajiri said. “It is just unfortunate that one individual is going to ruin reputations for the rest of the Nigerians. When we travel now, the system will make us pay, and I don’t feel good about it.”

Mr. Ajiri said he last visited Nigeria in April, and planned to go again this winter.

Lekan Oguntoyinbo, a Nigerian who used to live in Detroit and now lives in Columbia, Mo., said Mr. Abdulmutallab’s nationality would heighten suspicions of all Nigerians.

“Nigerians have had a horrible reputation with the authorities of this country for importing drugs and for things like Internet fraud,” said Mr. Oguntoyinbo, an assistant professor of journalism at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo. “I think this incident on Christmas not only makes us incredibly more suspect, but also positions Nigerians as enemies of the state. When you’re trying to blow up a plane, the dynamics of perception change a great deal.”

David Wiley, a sociology professor and director of the African Studies Center at Michigan State University, said it would be unfair for the attempted attack to tarnish the reputation of most Nigerians living here.

“Radicals are all over the world now,” Mr. Wiley said. “No one is immune from it. Islam has always had a strong presence in northern Nigeria, but Nigeria is a country of great religious diversity, and this person could have come from 100 other countries.”

“I don’t give much significance,” he said, “to the fact that the suspect is Nigerian.”

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